Eurasia covers around 55,000,000 square kilometres (21,000,000 sq mi), or around 36.2% of the
Earth's total land area. The landmass contains well over 5 billion people, equating to approximately 70% of the
human population. Humans first settled in Eurasia between 60,000 and 125,000 years ago. Some major islands, including
Great Britain,
Iceland, and
Ireland, and those of
Japan, the
Philippines and
Indonesia, are often included under the popular definition of Eurasia, in spite of being separate from the contiguous landmass.

Physiographically, Eurasia is a single continent.[5] The concepts of
Europe and
Asia as distinct continents date back to
antiquity and their borders are geologically arbitrary. In ancient times the
Black Sea and the
Sea of Marmara, along with their associated straits, were seen as separating the continents, but today the
Ural and
Caucasus ranges are more seen as the main delimiters between the two. Eurasia is connected to
Africa at the
Suez Canal, and Eurasia is sometimes combined with Africa to make the largest contiguous landmass on Earth called
Afro-Eurasia.[9] Due to the vast landmass and differences in latitude, Eurasia exhibits all types of climate under the
Köppen classification, including the harshest types of hot and cold temperatures, high and low precipitation and various types of
ecosystems.

Geopolitics

Originally, “Eurasia” is a geographical notion: in this sense, it is simply the biggest continent; the combined landmass of Europe and Asia. However, geopolitically, the word has several different meanings, reflecting the specific geopolitical interests of each nation.[10] “Eurasia” is one of the most important geopolitical concepts; as
Zbigniew Brzezinski observed:

“... how America "manages" Eurasia is critical. A power that dominates “Eurasia” would control two of the world’s three most advanced and economically productive regions. A mere glance at the map also suggests that control “Eurasia” would almost automatically entail Africa’s subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere and Oceania geopolitically peripheral to the world’s central continent. About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in “Eurasia”, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. “Eurasia” accounts for about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources.”[11]

At the moment one of the most prominent projects of the
European Union (EU) is the
Russia - EU Four Common Spaces Initiative. However, no significant progress was made and the project was put on hold after Russia-EU relations deteriorated after the crisis in Ukraine. An economic union of former Soviet states named the
Eurasian Economic Union was established in 2015, similar in concept to the EU.

The Russian concept of “Eurasia” corresponded initially more or less to the land area of
Imperial Russia in 1914, including parts of Eastern Europe.[12] One of Russia's main geopolitical interests lies in ever closer integration with those countries that it considers part of “Eurasia.”[13] This concept is further integrated with communist eschatology by author
Alexander Dugin as the guiding principle of "self-sufficiency of a large space" during expansion.[14]

Anthropology and genetics

In modern usage, the term "Eurasian" is a demonym usually meaning "of or relating to Eurasia" or "a native or inhabitant of Eurasia".[15]
The term "Eurasian" is also used to describe people of combined "Asian" and "European" descent.

^Lewis, Martin W.; Wigen, Kären (1997), The myth of continents: a critique of metageography, University of California Press, pp. 31–32,
ISBN0-520-20743-2 "While a few professionals may regard Europe as a mere peninsula of Asia (or Eurasia), most geographers—and almost all nongeographers—continue to treat it not only as a full-fledged continent, but as the archetypal continent."

^"Anthropologically, historically and linguistically Eurasia is more appropriately, though vaguely subdivided into West Eurasia (often including North Africa) and East Eurasia", Anita Sengupta, Heartlands of Eurasia: The Geopolitics of Political Space, Lexington Books, 2009, p.25